Complete Tosh.com

Don’t much like BMWs or, too often, their drivers, but their new ad has jolly good music that may already be familiar…

… and yes, it was, in one of the most surreal television episodes of the year. Jon Stewart, carefully serving tea and twinkies, asking in question number one: “So… where’s Osama bin Laden?”

I’m not sure what’s more surreal… a controversial sitting President appearing on a book tour in the US, or a controversial sitting President appearing on Comedy Central, on a book tour in the US.

And he did the Seat of Heat – asked who’d win a vote in Pakistan between President Bush and Osama bin Laden, Mushaffaf said: “they’d both lose miserably”.

Nothing on YouTube… yet.

Aha! Thanks to reader Pelle Sten who supplies these links in the comments…

(clips are now after the click)
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Respected former TV journalist (and ex-MP) Martin Bell uses Comment is free today to launch a broadside at the BBC’s Six O’Clock News, which he describes as “a parody of something between Down Your Way and Nationwide”.

“Yesterday was a busy news day. A British tourist was killed in Jordan, and more British soldiers died in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The prime minister persisted in denying the evident link between his foreign policy and the increasing dangers faced by the British everywhere. The Six O’Clock News summarily reported these events, with an illuminating commentary by Frank Gardner – and then it went off to the seaside.”

Bell’s is an important intervention, because he (i) knows what he’s talking about, (ii) raises the question of the BBC’s actual journalistic output, rather than its reputed journalistic output (iii) has no more of an axe to grind than anyone talking about a place where they used to work.

That’s to say: everyone, especially media luvvies, sees our time at an organisation as some kind of heyday, so his critique is vulnerable to that accusation. But, then again, you just need to watch the programme to see he’s right.

At the same time, a fuller analysis of the BBC’s TV news output would, surely, also conclude that other flagship programmes have gone off to the seaside, so to speak. And one only has to watch BBC Breakfast briefly to find it’s there, metaphorically and literally, all year round.

This is a programme that’s been so deeply, frustratingly bad for so long that it’s not so much dumbed down as permanently stupid, apparently obsessed with presenting the weather outdoors, doing fluff and referring to one of the host’s excursions on a “reality” ballroom dancing show, between donning sad faces to do the occasional piece of bad news from the real world. Is, I wonder, the show deliberately fluffy? Or is it down to the ability of its producers?

The answer, alas, may lie at the weekends. Sunday AM, successor to Breakfast with (Sir David) Frost, should be smarter TV, given its broad remit and brilliant presenter. Alas, Andrew Marr should beware his reputation the longer he fronts it. Marr’s is an embarassingly badly edited programme, and even the host himself – for whom I have enormous amounts of respect – appears to be floundering.

Only last Sunday, his interview with Sandra Howard – wife of ex Tory leader Michael who’s just written a book – was memorably poor; not necessarily his fault, but her faltering, uneasy performance was evidence she shouldn’t have got past a researcher on such a big show. The programme’s troubles can’t be blamed on its newness any more – it really is this bad.

It’s not all bad for the BBC. I thought Peter Sissons’ fill-in show from BBC News 24, shown on BBC1 while Marr was on holiday, was far, far better; unasbashedly highbrow, assembled in a way that suited Sissons’ style, and with a suitable pace for a Sunday morning. High-ups at the BBC might, however, wonder why the reserves appear better than the first team, especially when they have someone with the talent of Marr to work with.

was Anna Pickard’s minute-by-minute blogging of the final night, with personal favourite bits including:

9:07pm
“Here we go … fourth place … it’s Kinga!
I said it would be, and I was right. My god, that’s a low cut top. You’d have to be confident/brave to wear that. (Insert your own joke about having a lot of bottle here). (Do not insert any actual bottles).”

and

“Ooooh, I forgot to vote.

My god, women died for my right to vote – how could I forget? My mother will kill me.”

Meanwhile, on News24 Peter Sissons has just surveyed the News of the World’s splash this morning – “MAKOSI: MY SECRET SEX WITH ANT” – and muttered “God Almighty”. Luckily, I don’t think anyone else is watching.

From MediaGuardian.co.uk (free reg. required):

“ITV will attempt to boost its flagging audience share later this month with a six-day programming blitz featuring seven hours of I’m A Celebrity – Get Me Out Of Here! in peak time, six episodes of Emmerdale and no less than eight instalments of Coronation Street.
[...]
On Monday November 22, these three programmes will make up all but half an hour of ITV1′s peak time line-up, the exception being Tonight with Trevor McDonald at 8pm.

That night, ITV1 will lead off with Emmerdale at 7pm, three episodes of Coronation Street – at 7.30pm, 8.30pm and 10pm – and I’m A Celebrity… at 9pm.”

What with Children in Need filling BBC1′s schedules the previous Friday, truely we’re in for a television treat of a month as the nights draw in and the weather darkens. Certainly not time to join a DVD club. Or urgently seek more information on multichannel teevee down your phone line. Or head for the pub to drink until Spring.

Great news. Hollywoodreporter.com reports: “The city that never sleeps will soon be the backdrop of the next incarnation of CBS’ CSI franchise, the network confirmed Saturday.”

Hurrah. In the Tosh household, it’s the only show conferred complete, must-watch-in-utter-silence status. The kind of silence that involves the ending of conversations, switching on of amplifiers for better sound, pre-pouring of wine, adbreak-only boiling of kettles, the pacifying of mogs with chicken or catnip.

The only previous holder of this status has been West Wing, but since that disappeared from terrestrial screens CSI has picked up the slack. For those who don’t know it, CSI follows the work of two fictitious crime lab teams – one in Miami (Saturday nights) and the other in Las Vegas (our favourite – Tuesday nights). Shown on C5 in the UK, these dramas have yet to receive the critical acclaim won by the West Wing – less obviously clever, a tad geeky in subject and character for politicos who went for West Wing, and so perhaps as a result viewed more in secret than as something to talk about the next day.

But it still beats the shit out of tepid British attempts at crime dramas. I offer up the bloated, leaden-paced (if popular) Prime Suspect, or the remarkably pisspoor, last resort telly of Murder City, as witness to the allegation that we’re not very good at crime drama these days.

And even when it all goes right, as happened with the stylish, clever, pacy Hustle, we only do six episodes – and then tell viewers to come back next year for six more, just as the characters are getting developed. In the US they run a series (or season) for an average of 24 episodes. The only dramas we extend that kind of run to are depressing low-budget bankers like Casualty and Holby City. Sigh.